Faith, Reality, and Incarnation
The word faith is often thought of as an abstract word used to denote religious ascent to a specific idea of God. I think that if we are to understand faith, we must first come to terms with faith as a specific part of our created reality.[i] Faith belongs to God and is creatively sown into the fabric of reality. Faith is not an afterthought of God’s, it is not a consequence or result of God’s actions or humanity’s, rather, faith sits at the pinnacle of creative reality.[ii] Faith is the pathway to God and Jesus is the embodiment of faith's path.
By its nature faith requires an object, as an object, the invisible God cannot be simply personified, nor understood, he can enter history and be incarnated as a human being to live a distinct life under the sun.[iii] The incarnation is made possible because human beings bear the image of God, (God cannot become a cow). Once incarnated, God becomes visible and we have an image. The image is not to be understood in the sense of iconic symbol, but in the sense of expression. The life lived by God incarnate is the expression of God bound in human flesh and living.
God has related himself to humanity by creating us in his image (Christ is our kinsman redeemer) and because we bear God’s image, God can empty God’s self and become a human being. In the incarnation God’s essence joins the human race while he empties himself of his omnific attributes. The Philippian Hymn (2:5-11) also tells us that God found God’s self in human nature or form or likeness. Jesus being in essence God, found himself to be a human being. Likewise, as a human being he knew himself to be God incarnate.
Christ cried out on the cross 'My God, My God why have you forsaken me". The saying expresses Jesus’ sense of individual existence as a human being. He suffers alone without help from his father and the act of incarnation is so omnipotently accomplished that Jesus dies in the strength of a human being. Words struggle to communicate this moment of pathos; it seems that only the words of a poet would be able to communicate the moment. Isaiah could have penned the following words had he thought of them; I believe they serve to help understand the moment when Jesus cried out 'My God, My God why have you forsaken me; "God loved us so much that he lost himself and could not find himself." In relation to this moment on the cross, we could say that the one who found himself to be God, later, in a time of intense suffering, in an act of love, embraced death in obedience to the father, lost himself and could not find himself - he suffered and died. The humanity of God in Christ is not a fairy tale - the incarnation is the greatest expression of God's power and love and finds consummation in his giving of self upon one of humanity’s torturous instruments of capital punishment.
Jesus own self-awareness is a product of progressive maturity in the presence of both God and man. For we human beings, certainty comes after we receive the Spirit so likewise Jesus' own certainty (or complete realization of who he is) likely comes when the Spirit descends upon him at his baptism by John. In Matthew 28 in the piece known as the great commission there is an interesting comment made by the writer; some doubted. This comment takes place at the resurrection appearance of Jesus. The events in Matthew 28 take place prior to the giving of the Spirit. However, after the giving of the Spirit doubt is no longer noted amongst Christ’s immediate disciples. The Christian faith is able by God's Spirit to produce a certainty about God, who he is, his holiness, that enables the believer to be like Christ and become obedient to the voice of God even unto death, a death that is the consequence of giving ones self to others. It is to enter the realm of faith that sits in contrast to our creaturely instinct to preserve our life.
There is no higher idea or concept than that of the incarnation. The incarnation is God’s faith in action. The weakness of God is stronger than man. From the life of God as a Galilean peasant God exhibits existential power that will change creation itself. God once spoke in power and said, ‘let there be light’. God once spoke in power and said, ‘let my people go’. God once spoke from a mountain with thundering and lightning and earthquakes, but now he has spoken from the life of the lowly man Jesus. God has spoken amidst his voluntary act of love, of allowing human beings to torture and kill him.
God’s faith in himself is exhibited through the risk taken in becoming a human being. Leaving the defining attributes of God behind, God walks where he has never walked before. Leaving the defining attributes of God behind, God redefines what it means to be God. Because of the incarnation and its permanence part of what it means to be God is to be human, (this was not so prior to the coming of God in Jesus Christ).[iv] Within the context of human history (the Exodus) God’s first self-revelation is identified with acts of power. As history unfolds God’s later act of self-revelation is identified with the strength of weakness or strength in weakness. Seemingly defenseless the son of God surrenders up his life to be taken by human beings. Yet this act of apparent weakness is more powerful to convert the human heart from stone to flesh than any act of God ever accomplished. God’s character is found in his nature and his nature is to be Holy. The nature of God could not be overcome by the sufferings, and trials of being human. When God was emptied of his omnific attributes and poured into human flesh his nature (holiness which is the essence of his being) was incarnated.
Although power is the defining attribute of God, we have misunderstood powers relationship to existence.
The power of God exhibited in the life-giving act of Christ’s passion speaks with a power that contends with the act of creation itself. The coming of God in Jesus Christ reveals God to us in a way that also surpasses the power exhibited during the exodus of the people of God from Egypt.
There is no act of power that God could perform to ultimately prove he is God, no act of knowledge, nor presence. The act that communicates the living God is a living act of giving - giving all and reduced to the confines of being human God suffers and dies. Any culpability on God’s part for our present state is met in the life, death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. The act of love that causes God to act in such extreme measures is the ultimate revelation of his being. The resurrection then is the ultimate act of God’s power and love united. This is so for the resurrection reconciles creature and creator enabling the way for all to follow, to be received by God.
Again, there is no act of power that God can perform, no act of knowledge or presence that can ultimately prove God is God. God does not attempt to prove himself to be God (at least not conclusively). God reveals himself - and the greatest revelation of God apart from the witness of creation itself is found in the incarnational life of God in the man Jesus Christ.
Faith has been woven so intricately into the fabric of existence that God had faith in himself. God had faith that emptied of his omnific attributes he would overcome all the trials and challenges of human existence. Through Christ God overcame doubt which is humanity’s principal enemy and produces death. Faith is a tangible reality, so near that it is in our mouths, so real that faith’s object has lived a human life.
We human beings live in constant tension always vacillating between extremes. Living in the tension between the present age and the age to come, we seek this new age where God reigns. Our problem is we desire to save the present age while God has pronounced a death sentence upon it. Faith is the evidence of the new age alive in the present. Faith is the hope that defies reason and finds certainty that can cause a person to give their life.
Death as an end is not difficult (unless it is torturous like the Lord’s) it is dying daily that strains the flesh. When dying is an act of the will (following the model of Jesus’ life of service to God) it confirms the new age of spiritual certainty. Spiritual certainty is born in relationship with a living God that has revealed himself in the most powerful way possible - through the weakness of human flesh by way of incarnation.
Faith is believing ascent to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ, yet not solely in a confessional way, but rather in a way that demands we live according to faith’s promptings. Because we believe we must act, because we believe we must let go of the world and lean upon what cannot be seen.
Faith is an ontological, existential, reality just like love. Faith is both cognitive choice and experiential power, and it is reaching out for every soul’s attention. Once faith captures our attention its grasp is more real than warm hands massaging the shoulders. Faith is life, doubt is death, and the knowledge of God is relationally paved by faith’s presence. All around us are perishable things, yet faith abides forever. Faith abides as a reality more certain than wealth, power, or even the present creation. Faith is as natural a response as breathing.
Although faith is as natural as breathing, faith requires an object and the object must be correctly identified. The object is Christ and his identification as God incarnate is essential to the message of God. The Spirit of God accompanies the message because faith is connectedness with God. Without the message humanity chokes on doubts air, gasping at endless choices and thoughts and will never be able to find the truth. Although the message is written in a book it is not to be so contained. The message of the good news must be released from the printed page to be lived in the lives of God’s people.
Faith reproduces Christ in every human being. Jesus is seen alive in another human being when faith is active. Jesus is seen alive in a human being when he or she is actively laying down their own life to serve others.
If we are to have a mind like Jesus and live after his incarnational model, then it is the hearing of God’s voice and obeying that is imperative. Likewise, it is the servant model of life that is imperative. The reward for such living is Christ, and the power experienced in such living is God’s.
Where O Where have all the Christians gone?
[i] Faith as a part of our created reality is not God, it is an active conduit of possibility and that conduit of possibility is God’s creative work in humanity and the world.
[ii] I like to refer to humanity as the apex of God’s creation and faith as the pinnacle of God’s creation of reality. Reality is both the physical and the unseen. The unseen is manifested in the physical. In relation to humanity the unseen is understood with words and manifested relationally. Faith belongs first to the unseen as a created reality and is manifest by humanity. If you will, faith, like love, and hope, cannot be bottled and sold. These aspects of reality were in the heart of God before our creation. These ontological realities first existed in God and therefore, like God, are invisible. God reveals God’s self through the manifestation of the invisible in the physical creation. The creation of the physical was to serve the invisible reality that God desired to share with the physical creation. The reality of God’s existence as the living God is faith’s communication to us. God is love; however, love is not God. God created our physical reality to contain the invisible reality of existence, of being alive. So, these aspects of existence are created in us as the gift of life. The reality where they are manifest contains the invisible reality, we call spirit. God is a Spirit and the creation of a spiritual reality that enfleshed creatures might experience, might share in as gift, exists as certainly as the physical. Jesus called this reality the Kingdom of God.
This invisible reality is made evident in the story of Jesus walking on water. He is thought by the disciples to be a spirit. However, Jesus’ act of walking on water was, according to the story, an act of faith. Peter failed because of his faith, his relational connectedness to God was lacking. Yes, it is a sign that Christ is Lord of the chaos (chaotic waters of creation), it is also an act of faith that manifests spirit in a physical world, as a physical creature. Faith is the realm of a spiritual reality that is harmonious with the existence and will of God.
[iii] A simple personification of God would be only a theophany, a temporary appearance unable to provide the self-revelation of God given in the incarnation. The theophanies of the OT are suggestive of God taking the next step of incarnation.
[iv] Psalm 110:4 declares the permanence of the resurrection. The priestly status of Jesus is affirmed with an irrevocable oath from God.
